Cameras are incorporated into a wide range of devices. For example, widely used consumer electronics devices, such as phones, tablets, and laptops, include a camera. To comply with the targeted cost for such devices, the camera must be manufactured at very low cost. The manufacturing cost of a typical camera module is composed of (a) cost of materials, such as cost of the image sensor, the lens material, and the packaging material, and (b) cost of packaging (including assembly). In many cases, the cost of packaging is significant and may even exceed the cost of materials. For example, both of image sensors and lenses may be inexpensively produced at the wafer-level, while the process of aligning the lens with the image sensor and the process of constructing a light-tight housing (apart from the viewing port) for the camera module are non-wafer-level processes that contribute to the total cost of a camera module in a non-negligible fashion.
Array cameras, such as stereo cameras, have significant market potential not only in consumer electronics but also in the automotive and machine vision industries. In an array camera, each lens must be aligned to its corresponding image sensor, and each individual camera of the array camera must be light-tight such that there is no interference from unwanted external light and such that there is no cross-talk between individual cameras. The process of packaging array cameras is therefore particularly costly.